Undercurrent
by Sionnain
Summary: Narcissa waits for him in the moonlight with secrets of her own.


**Undercurrent**

_Her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat; Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe That all was lost. _--Milton, _Paradise Lost_

Narcissa sleeps in gentle languor, covered in ivory silk, winter-wheat hair spread out on the ice-blue satin of her pillow. Her breath rises and falls, easy and untroubled. As she shifts slightly in the bed her hand reaches out and her fingers curl into the sheets, as if caressing the emptiness in the space where he should be.

Lucius stands in the shadows of their bedroom -face shielded with his bone-white mask- folds of black engulfing his body and draped over his platinum hair. He knows what he must do; take the cloak and the mask and hide it beneath the floorboards, climb back into bed with his young wife, hold her in his arms and inhale her scent of jasmine.

_Leave all of it behind, what he has done, what he has become. This is his wife, the future mother of his heir, and such things are to be kept far away from her. He does not want her to gaze at him with eyes gone glassy with madness, not like her sister. _

Despite his best intentions, the kill clings to him like smoke from a fire, and he's inhaling it still as he stands there, watching her, the press of the night almost too much to bear. His brain is feverish with depraved fantasies of Narcissa beneath him, terrified and aroused and crying for him, tears running down the sides of her face into her hair, eyes adoring as she gasps his name.

The dark magic he's commanded seeps into his blood like a poison and he can feel it, rising like a wave in his body, choking him. He tries to speak, maybe it is her name, but all that escapes him is silence. It is for the best. He should bathe, have a brandy, do something to calm the beast that prowls beneath his skin.

He cannot make himself move, however, and he is riveted by the sight of her slumbering in the shadows. His breath is coming too fast, rapid and quick, like earlier that night when the magic had unfurled inside of him and spilled out like a torrent, when he'd taken life in a rush of sickness and fascinated horror.

He's aware when she awakens, when she opens drowsy eyes to see him standing there in the shadows of their room. Her husband. Her lover.

_Dark wizard. Voldemort's Angel of Death._

"Lucius," she whispers slowly rising from the bed, moving towards him silently across the floor on bare feet with delicate arches, gliding across the floor on raised toes like a ballerina _en pointe_. She is dressed in some confection of silver and lace; tantalizing him with the briefest glimpses of orchid-fair skin as she moves.

In silence he raises his hands; covered in black leather, covered in death, in attempt to halt her forward progress. He feels all the magic he's commanded that night rising to the surface and whispering inside of him.

Though she is fair and delicate, like a china doll, she is not weak. She is a Black. Her sister Bellatrix wears her surname in the shine of her dark eyes, in the cascade of her ebony hair, in the madness that is etched into every lean sinew of her body. Oh, but his fair Narcissa…_hers_ lives inside of her like a fathomless pool of water in a darkened cave, lying cool and still and quiet.

_Sometimes he thinks he sees it, when it tinges the soft edges of her smile or slides forth in the quiet sound of her laughter, and it is infinitely more appealing to him than all of Bella's dark and twisted beauty. _

She moves with spectral grace, and her small hands slide up the scratchy wool of his cloak in a caress that makes him shiver. She's breathing too fast, and he can see her pupils are dilated, irises swallowing the cornflower blue of her eyes. Her fingers brush over the white of his mask, and his breath strangles in his throat as he remains still as a sentinel beneath her gentle exploration. 

"You've...what have you done?" She's pressing herself close to him, draping herself across him like flowers on a grave, and her voice is whisper-soft and makes him half-mad with lust.

"The Dark Lord's bidding," Lucius answers, and as he speaks he can feel the demonic taint of the magic as the words fall from his mouth, and she raises her face to his for a kiss.

"Narcissa," he whispers, voice rough and desperate, as the darkness inside of him rises and threatens to drag them both under.

"Lucius," she says, and there it is, the edge of something villainous under otherwise smoothly enunciated syllables, a sibilant sound at the end of his name that reminds him of a serpent.

Her hands pull the mask from his face, fingers warm against his chilled skin. He leans down to kiss her as she tosses the mask away to land on the chaise by her dresser, and it falls soundless and forgotten on the striped silk 

His lips are cold, but hers are burning hot, and his hands curl around her waist as he pulls her sharply against him. Narcissa's nimble fingers slide under his cloak to the naked flesh of his left forearm, to where his Mark burns fierce and dark. She presses, lightly, her nails scratching just the slightest bit, and at the slightest twinge of pain he comes undone and lets the stygian tide pull them both under.

Lucius' hands are rough as he pushes her away from him so that she scrambles backwards to the bed. She falls with peculiar grace upon the mussed sheets with a small, breathless exclamation, the silver of her negligee glinting like a promise in the moonlight. He advances upon her, dressed in his funereal black with his silver eyes burning, hair very white against the wool.

"Run, if you want," he suggests, voice a low primal growl. The thought has a certain depraved charm, actually. Thrilling to pursue her through the quiet hallways of the manor; to take her against the polished floors of the music room, or upon the divan in the parlor where she serves tea to wealthy visitors. 

"Later," she says, and he almost does not recognize the leashed excitement in her voice. She smiles up at him and leans back, a virginal offering on some dark altar, and he smiles in return and likes the way it makes her shiver.

His slow advance leads him to her at last, and as he reaches her his hands tear at her the lace covering her soft white body. He slowly descends upon her, like Lucifer falling from heaven, and presses her beneath the weight of his body.

Outside, the stars are burning-white in a field of darkness.

Finis


End file.
